Bass of the Week: Oliver Lang Instruments Limes “Erik”

This week we check out the Limes bass, a unique singlecut design that’s handmade by Oliver Lang Instruments. The series came as a collaboration between Lang and his customer Michael after meeting at a fretless workshop. Together they created the first of the Limes series, dubbed the “Erik,” which features a five-piece maple and walnut neck, walnut body wings with a maple layer, a mahogany top, and a fretless ebony fingerboard. Besides the fantastic figured woods, an important aspect for Michael was the variety of sounds he could get out of it.

“When I started with playing bass I had an active bass and started, modding nearly right away,” Michael shares. “I learned that I’d like to have three or four different sounds easy to select after adjusting them once. If the bass produces different sounds you don’t need switchable amps or such things. Oliver asked, ‘how many sounds do you REALLY need?’ So we decided to use an elegant 5-way rotary switch as a sound selector for the three pickups and mounted two tone controls which are switched by the rotaryswitch too. So it’s possible to adjust a rock-sound, a slap-sound, a fretless-sound, a pop-sound and an ‘I’m nearly a doublebass’-sound and switch between them very fast. The main kind of the sound is precise, well defined like mostly used in jazz or fusion, but I even like it for punk and rock songs.”

Other adjustments include a rail for the thumb next to the neck and some extra top shaping. “The bass seems to be plain but the little shaping at the right places makes the bass fit like a glove,” Michael says.

Lang has built two other Limes basses a fretted bass made from maple and walnut and another fretless made from cherry and wenge. The model can be built with an array of specs.